In industrial workplaces, assembly operations, maintenance and repair operations, institutions, healthcare facilities and other environments, workers often have a recurring need to access and replenish their supplies. Historically, the worker would leave his or her work area, walk to a tool crib or store room, and request the desired item from the tool crib attendant or storeroom clerk. The tool crib attendant would write down the request, manually pick up the desired item from a shelf, and hand it to the worker. The worker would then return to his or her work area with the requested item, and the attendant would then enter the dispensing event into a record-keeping system. The procurement or purchasing department of the company would typically manually check inventory levels to determine when new supplies needed to be ordered.
However, such a system is time consuming and inefficient since the worker loses productivity by walking to and from the tool crib or storeroom and waiting for the attendant to get the supplies. In addition, the attendant would often manually write down the request and enter the request/dispensing event into a computer system, requiring extra labor and increasing the chances of human error. The tool crib attendant's duties also incur additional labor, and the tool crib or storeroom requires extra space. Finally, manually checking inventory levels is a time consuming, costly and error-prone process. This, in turn, requires that inventory levels be increased to provide a buffer inventory or “safety stock” which is costly, inefficient and wasteful. Certain industrial vending systems may address and alleviate some of these issues, but still present various inefficiencies in their use.